Isobel Allen
Emeritus Professor of Health and Social Policy
i.allen@psi.org.uk

doctors' careers and the organisation of the medical workforce; family planning; terminations of pregnancy; teenage pregnancies; older people; interface between health and social care; health care of homeless people; community care; residential care of older people; evaluation; maternity services.

Lorenzo Cappellari
Visiting Research Fellow
lorenzo.cappellari@unicatt.it

Lorenzo is currently associate professor of economics, Facoltà di Economia, Università Cattolica, Milano. His research interests are labour economics, income distribution and dynamics, economics of education, and microeconometrics

Read Lorenzo's full CV [pdf]

Gabriel Chanan
Visiting Research Fellow

Gabriel Chanan is an independent consultant on community involvement, engagement and development. He directed research and policy at the Community Development Foundation for many years. He has been a leading adviser to government on community engagement and involvement, and from 2005-8 he worked on empowerment in the Home Office and the Department of Communities and Local Government. He is currently working with the Homes and Communities Academy on spreading empowerment skills across professions, and in a number of other areas.

Sue Clegg
Visiting Research Fellow
sclegg@tiscali.co.uk

Sue Clegg has almost 20 years' experience in research. She specialises in qualitative research and has worked both in academia and in an agency; she has managed projects in the UK and across Europe. Sue's expertise is in health and well-being, including: food choices; experience of services; living with health problems and disabilities; and the perspectives of professionals. Recent work includes work for the Food Standards Agency, exploring people's use and understanding of front-of-pack nutrition information labels, a process evaluation of a calorie-information scheme, an evaluation of pilot childcare programmes for DfE (then DfES), DWP and the Welsh Assembly, and an investigation of the medical information needs of health professionals.

Sue has also lectured in sociology, specialising in research methods, and has delivered training on researching sensitive issues.

Fred Coalter
Visiting Research Fellow

Fred Coalter is professor of sports policy at the University of Stirling. In 2002 Fred was awarded an Honorary Fellowship by the Institute of Leisure and Amenity Management and in 2004 he was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Leisure Sciences (USA). In addition has been a member of the Council of Europe Working Group on Sport and Social Exclusion; Chair of sportscotland’s Sport 21 Forum on Sport and Social Inclusion; member of Sport England's Working Group on Performance Measurement for the Development of Sport; member of Audit Commission’s Working Group on Best Value in Sport and Recreation; expert advisor to the Scottish Physical Activity and Health Council; member of the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister’s Neighbourhood Renewal Unit’s Advisory Group on Sport and sportscotland's Sport 21 Implementation Steering Group. He is also a member of the editorial board of Managing Leisure: an international journal.

View his CV here.

Nick Coleman
Visiting Research Fellow

Nick Coleman has been working as an independent research consultant since July 2007, providing expertise in survey and sample design, project management, analysis and reporting.

Recent projects include advice to BERR and other WERS sponsors on the design of the 6th Workplace Employment Relations Survey (WERS), and to the General Teaching Council on the design of the 2009 Annual Teachers Survey. He has also worked as part of the research team on a major survey of children’s services providers, with BMRB on behalf of DCSF, with specific responsibility for the sample design. Current projects include the evaluation of Lone Parent Obligations, in which he has responsibility for the quantitative research, working with Inclusion and NatCen for DWP. He has also carried out the analysis and reporting for a number of recent projects, for government departments including DWP, DCSF and the Home Office.

He previously worked at BMRB and MORI, and during this time managed a range of major quantitative studies for central government departments. These included large-scale evaluation studies for DWP; other major DWP studies of benefit customers, employer surveys, and surveys of adult skills and learning.

Rosemary Davidson
Research Fellow
r.davidson@psi.org.uk

Rosemary joined PSI’s Work and Social Policy group in June 2009 as a qualitative research fellow. She is a social psychologist undertaking research in social status, resilience and group processes, previously working at University College London’s department of Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology and before that at London School of Economics (Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion).

She was awarded a PhD investigating the role of psycho-social mechanisms in the generation of health inequalities in 2003 from the Medical Research Council’s Social and Public Health Sciences Unit.

Augustin De Coulon
Visiting Research Fellow
augustin.decoulon@kcl.ac.uk

Augustin is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Management at the School of Social Science and Public Policy, Kings College, London. His interests include the labour market assimilation of migrants, the economics of education (basic skills and vocational training) and health economics (risky behaviours).

Simon Dresner
Research Fellow
s.dresner@psi.org.uk

Simon's expertise is in the social and economic aspects of sustainability. His book The Principles of Sustainability was published by Earthscan in 2002 and an updated second edition was published in 2008. In the area of environmental taxation, he coordinated an EC research project on social responses to ecological tax reform policies (PETRAS), worked on a project about ways to remove regressivity from environmental taxes and did research on public attitudes for the Green Fiscal Commission. He is now coordinating a project for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation about designing a carbon tax to protect low-income households.

Tim Edwards
PSI Administrator
edwardt@psi.org.uk

Responsible for the overall management of PSI offices and support services.

Martin Evans
Visiting Research Fellow
martin.evans@socres.ox.ac.uk

Martin Evans is Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Social Policy and Social Work at the University of Oxford and works in both the Social Disadvantage Research Centre and the Centre for South African Social Policy. He joined PSI as a visiting fellow in 2009 having previously worked at the University of Bath and at the London School of Economics.

His research interests are in income, poverty and social security, developing countries, neighbourhood deprivation and welfare to work programmes. He is currently an Economic and Social Research Council Research Fellow and is engaged in research profiling the changes in British social policy since 1979 using an innovatory model lifetime approach. In 2006 he was Visiting Fellow at the School of Social Welfare at the University of California, Berkeley. He is an associate of the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion at the LSE. Before gaining his PhD from the LSE in 1992, Martin worked in community law centre and advice centres.

Francesca Francavilla
Research Fellow
f.francavilla@psi.org.uk

Francesca joined the PSI Employment research group in January 2008 as a Research Fellow. Prior to joining PSI, she worked as Post-doctoral researcher at the University of Florence (Italy), where she previously obtained a PhD in Development Economics.

She is a quantitative researcher specialising in labour market economics with econometric and data handling skills using both administrative data and survey data. Her main research interests include Programme valuation, Welfare-to-work, Child labour, and Poverty reduction.

Her most recent research involved the analysis of the relationship between mother and child labour and the causal relationship between poverty and fertility in less developed countries. She worked as a consultant to UNICEF, WHO and the Understanding Children's Work project (ILO, UNICEF and the World Bank inter-agency research project).

At PSI Francesca is working on the Employment Retention and Advancement (ERA) programme, for the Department for Work and Pensions and on the Understanding the housing and economic circumstances of The Riverside Group tenants project, for The Riverside Group.

She is also working on a project for the European Parliament on the evaluation of the value of Unpaid Family Care Work in the EU.

Gianna Giannelli
Visiting Research Fellow

Gianna is Associate Professor of Economics in the Faculty of Law of the University of Florence. She is also associate researcher of CHILD (Centre for Household, Income, Labour and Demographic economics, Turin) and research fellow of IZA (Institute for the Study of Labor, Bonn). She is member of the scientific committee of the Italian Association of Labour Economists (AIEL).

Her current research interests concern the labour market of developing countries and the effects of labour market reforms on the duration of employment and unemployment in Europe.

Read Gianna's full CV here.

Mayer Hillman
Senior Fellow Emeritus
mayer.hillman@blueyonder.co.uk

Mayer's research interests include: energy conservation; walking and cycling; road safety; climate change; health promotion; quality of life issues; environmental and resource sustainability; green economics; children's physical and social development; setting clocks forward.

Visit his personal website here.

Lesley Hoggart
Visiting Research Fellow
L.Hoggart@greenwich.ac.uk

Lesley is currently Principal Research Fellow in the School of Health and Social Care, University of Greenwich, and was previously Senior Research Fellow, Work and Social Policy Group at PSI.

Fatima Husain
Senior Research Fellow
f.husain@psi.org.uk

Fatima joined PSI in November 2009 as a Senior Research Fellow. Fatima has over 12 years of UK-based policy research experience and has previously worked at the Centre for Economic and Social Inclusion, Save the Children UK, the Family and Parenting Institute and the University of North London (London Met.)

She has extensive experience of designing and managing qualitative research projects and qualitative components of programme and service evaluations utilising a range of methods including focus groups, stakeholder consultations, and in-depth interviews. She also has experience of facilitating consultation workshops to develop programme models using Theory of Change approaches.

Genevieve Knight
Quantitative Group Manager
g.knight@psi.org.uk

Genevieve is an applied economist/econometrician, with a quantitative emphasis. Her main field of interest is evaluation of policy programs and the labour market. Her chief skills are with econometric modeling, and handling complex data. However, she also conducts cost-benefit analysis , and systematic literature and evidence reviews. She has previously specialised in macroeconometrics and time series at the Australian Bureau of Statistics, worked on various academic research projects, and undertaken microeconometric panel analysis of the cost of job loss with Paul Gregg and Jonathan Wadsworth at the Centre for Economic Performance LSE. She is a graduate of the University of Sydney, Australia, had an Overseas Research Studentship, with the London School of Economics, and completed her doctoral thesis on the topic Evaluation of the Australian Wage Subsidy: Special Youth Employment and Training Program, SYETP.

At PSI, she first worked on the DSS project 'Self-employment and pensions', with the Employment Service on the New Deal for Young People quantitative evaluation, as well as working on the New Deal for Scotland quantitative evaluation with the Scottish Executive, the Joint Claims evaluation, the Macro evaluation of NDYP, and benchmarking of NDYP for the NAO. Recent work has been with the DWP projects for the Joint Claims Extension working with the quantitative survey, and the administrative data analysis of Lone Parent Work Focused Interviews (Personal Adviser Meetings) using difference in differences. An interesting application of multiple treatment propensity score matching techniques was undertaken in the secondary analyses of NDLP and LPWFI, while hazard analysis was applied in analysing the In Work Benefit Calculation for lone parents. An extensive literature and methods review was undertaken to collect together methods and evidence for Evaluating the Working for Families policy project (New Zealand Ministry of Social Development).

She is leading the Evaluation of Childcare Taster Pilots and Extended Schools Childcare Pilot (DfES), and is part of the team for the In Work Credit and lone parent pilots evaluation, the Pathways to Work Incapacity Benefit Pilots Evaluation, and the Employment Retention and Advancement Demonstration Evaluation, which are for the Department for Work and Pensions.

Jenny Lau
Research Administrator
j.lau@psi.org.uk

Mia Lorenz
Lecturer in Applied Social & Market Research Methods
post@mialorenz.net

Mia Lorenz is a key member of the MA/MSc Applied Market & Social Research/MRS Diploma Applied Market & Social Research team. She serves as module leader for three of the seven course modules: Introduction to Qualitative and Quantitative Research, Qualitative Research Methods and Data Analysis and Research Practice and Assessment. She develops and delivers lectures in applied research methodology and ethics, supervises student dissertation projects and actively supports the continued development of the course.

Mia has an MA in Applied Social and Market Research from the University of Westminster, her dissertation winning the prestigious MRS Accredited Dissertation Prize. She is a Full Member of the MRS, as well as Member of the Social Research Association and the Higher Education Academy. She has many years experience of senior project management in the research and web services industries.

Robert Lyons
Website Administrator
r.lyons@psi.org.uk

Karen Mackinnon
Research Fellow
mackink@psi.org.uk

Data preparation, analysis and large-scale data management. Karen has considerable experience of handling complex data sets such as the Family Resources Survey and Youth Cohort Study.

Alan Marsh
Emeritus Professor
a.marsh@psi.org.uk

• the relationship between social and economic change and social policy, and
• the evaluation of social policy both in general and in quasi-experimental pilots.

Neil Mcenery West
Research Finance Officer
mcenerne@psi.org.uk

Geoffrey Meen
Visiting Research Fellow
g.p.meen@reading.ac.uk

Geoffrey Meen has over 20 years experience of working in housing economics and related fields. He is currently Professor of Applied Economics at the University of Reading and Adjunct Professor at RMIT University, Melbourne. He is a former Head of the Economics Department at Reading and Director of Research for the University’s Business School. Geoffrey is also currently UK Director of the International Centre for Housing and Urban Economics. He was awarded an OBE in the 2007 New Years Honours List for Services to Social Housing and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in the same year. He is also a Fellow of the Weimer School of Advanced Studies in Real Estate and Land Economics, Florida.

His research interests are in applied econometrics, economic analysis of housing markets at different spatial levels from the national through to the local, and the economics of segregation and deprivation.

Elisabetta Mocca
Research Officer
moccae@psi.org.uk

Elisabetta is a Research Officer in the Environment Group at PSI. Elisabetta has a background in secondary data analysis and review work. She is currently working on a literature review on environmental energy systems and health, and conducting data analysis for the group’s work on Children’s Independent Mobility. Prior to joining PSI she worked as a researcher at the Institute for Economic and Social Research in Turin with a focus on social housing and health care. Elisabetta obtained a master's degree in Administration Science and a first degree in International Studies from the Faculty of Political Science in Turin.

Stephen Morris
Principal Research Fellow
s.morris@psi.org.uk

Stephen joined PSI in 2008 having spent 12 years as a researcher in central government, holding posts at the Department of Social Security (DSS), Office for National Statistics (ONS), Prime Minister's Strategy Unit and Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). Prior to this, Stephen was a Research Officer at the Institute for Employment Studies.

The focus of Stephen's work has mainly been on large and complex policy evaluations, including the Prototype New Deal for Lone Parents and the design of the Employment Retention and Advancement Demonstration, the largest randomised trial of welfare-to-work policies thus far conducted in the UK.  Stephen has also been responsible for several longitudinal studies of families with children, including the Programme of Research into Low Income Families (PRILIF) and the Families and Children Study (FACS).  He also worked in the DWP Model Development Unit, where he was responsible for demographic analysis and forecasting, specifically undertaking econometric estimation for the department's main dynamic micro-simulation model of pensioner incomes, PENSIM2.

In previous work, Stephen was responsible for drafting guidance on evaluation methods for government researchers and made a substantial contribution to the government's guidance on ex-post evaluation methods, the Magenta Book.  He also taught courses on evaluation methods and evidence-based policy at the National School for Government.  In 2006, Stephen completed a Research Fellowship at the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion (CASE), funded by the ESRC, where he conducted research into child support using micro-level longitudinal data.  Stephen is a member of the BHPS Scientific Advisory Committee and is a on the Editorial Board of <i>Benefits: The Journal of Poverty and Social Justice</i>, a tri-annual publication covering applied research into poverty and welfare.

Stephen's work at PSI currently includes Provider-Led Pathways impact evaluation and two feasibility studies for the DWP looking at methods of impact evaluation.  He teaches on the MA in Applied Market and Social Research offered through the Social Sciences, Humanities and Languages School at the University of Westminster.

Glen Murphy
Senior Research Finance Officer
G.Murphy3@westminster.ac.uk

Nazmiye Ozkan
Senior Research Fellow
n.ozkan@psi.org.uk

Nazmiye joined the PSI Environment Group in February 2005. Prior to joining PSI, she worked as a post-doctoral researcher at the Regional Economics Applications Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her main research interests include integration of environment, economy and energy models; modelling and analysis of regional energy systems and their relationship to overall economic growth and development; analysis of climate change impacts and their implications for local healthcare policy and provision. Nazmiye holds a PhD in Regional Planning from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Athena Piterou
Visiting Research Fellow
athenapiterou@hotmail.com

Kathryn Ray
Senior Research Fellow
k.ray@psi.org.uk

Kathryn Ray has been at the Policy Studies Institute since 2004 and is now a Senior Research Fellow. She specialises in qualitative research, using a range of research methods, and has been involved in several mixed methods social policy evaluations. She has two main areas of research interest.

1. The experiences of disadvantaged and low-paid workers in the context of labour market insecurity and the evolving welfare to work policy context. Of particular interest are the implications of the policy agenda for gendered work relations and identities.
2. Racialised and ethnic social divisions, particularly in light of the current policy agenda around ‘integration’ and social and community cohesion.

Kathryn currently leads a research project for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation on ‘work-benefit cycling’ and recurrent poverty.

Mark Rickinson
Visiting Research Fellow

Dr Mark Rickinson is a research consultant with a particular interest in the environment who specialises in educational research and evaluation, research reviews and research training (www.markrickinson.co.uk). He is currently leading an Anti-Bullying Development & Research (D&R) Project with Coventry City Council and recently completed two projects for the European Commission on Evidence-based Policy and Practice in Education and Training. He also works as a Senior Research Associate at the Young Foundation and is a Visiting Research Fellow at Oxford University Department of Education. Previously he spent several years as a Senior Research Officer at the National Foundation for Educational Research.

Malcolm Rigg
Director, Policy Studies Institute
m.rigg@psi.org.uk

Malcolm joined PSI as Director in October 2004. He was previously Managing Director of the British Market Research Bureau (BMRB). Before joining BMRB he was Director of Research at COI Communications and has also been Head of Public Interest Research at Consumers' Association (now Which?). Earlier in his career he was a Senior Research Fellow at PSI. He is an Academician of the Social Sciences, a Fellow of the Market Research Society and of the Royal Society of Arts; and an Honorary Life Member of the Association of Survey Computing. He is a Trustee of the participation organization, Involve.

Sergio Salis
Research Fellow
S.Salis@psi.org.uk

Sergio joined the PSI Employment research group in January 2008 as a Research Fellow. Prior to joining the PSI, he worked as a Research Fellow at the Institute for the Study of European Transformations (ISET) of the London Metropolitan University and as a Post-doctoral researcher at the University of Cagliari (Italy), where he previously obtained a PhD in Economics. His main research interests include development economics, labour economics, industrial relations and applied microeconomics.

Sergio is a quantitative researcher with over five years experience in handling micro-data. He has a long-standing interest in productivity-related issues and in the evaluation of policy interventions. His most recent research involved the evaluation of the causal effect of foreign acquisition on the productivity of Slovenian manufacturing firms and the evaluation of the causal effect of the Government’s Pathways to Work programme on Incapacity Benefits claimants in new expansion areas.

Roger Salmons
Senior Research Fellow
r.salmons@wmin.ac.uk

Roger is an environmental economist with significant experience of applying economic analysis to the design and evaluation of environmental policy, having spent over 10 years as a researcher at PSI and CSERGE at University College London. During this time he worked on collaborative research projects with organisations throughout Europe and was a member of the European Research Network on Market-Based Instruments for Sustainable Development and the European Research Network on Tradable Emission Permits. His main areas of interest and expertise relate to the evaluation of environmental policies and measures; the design and evaluation of economic instruments; and environmental policy and economic performance.

In addition to his research activities, Roger has acted as an expert consultant to Defra, the Environment Agency, OECD and the European Commission. More recently, he has worked in the consultancy sector, as Technical Director for the Environmental Economics Team at Jacobs Engineering UK. Roger also has previous senior management experience in the commercial sector, having spent 11 years working for a leading UK retail company.

Hilary Salter
Research Administrator
h.salter@psi.org.uk

Ben Shaw
Head of Environment Group
b.shaw@psi.org.uk

Ben joined PSI in October 2006 and has been Head of the Environment Group since January 2008. Since joining PSI he has worked on projects investigating innovation, eco-innovation, environmental tax reform and the links between research and policy outcomes. He is one of the co-ordinators of the Defra/DfT funded Sustainable Development Research Network (SDRN) and manages the secretariat for the Green Fiscal Commission.

His current and recent projects include: Green Fiscal Commission which is looking at greening the UK tax system; a project for the SKEP Network of 17 European environmental ministries and agencies which is developing a methodology for assessing the impact of research on environmental policy; and leading the Children’s Independent Mobility project which is aiming to understand how children’s freedom to play and travel outside has changed over the past 40 years.

Prior to joining PSI, Ben was Principal Policy Adviser at Green Alliance. His work there mainly focused on national level strategic policy development in the areas of waste, resource and product policy, but also included projects on the role of negotiated agreements in UK environmental policy and sustainable consumption.

Deborah Smeaton
Senior Research Fellow
d.smeaton@psi.org.uk

Deborah joined PSI in 1999 and, as a mixed-methods researcher, has worked on a broad range of projects, using a variety of methodological approaches. She is experienced in:

• overall research design
• quantitative data analysis (cross sectional, panel, large and complex)
• survey design
• qualitative methods including case studies, focus groups and in-depth interviewing
• qualitative data analysis
• evaluation design and
• systematic literature reviewing/distillation.

Her research experience and publications span a variety of areas, with a focus on labour-market issues, including: entrepreneurship, older workers, change in the workplace, work and parenthood, maternity and paternity rights, discrimination, equalities, disadvantage, work-life balance, welfare to work and, more recently, food hygiene and nutrition-related research.

Deborah has managed projects for a wide variety of clients and agencies, including: DTI, DWP, HMRC, ESRC, JRF, EHRC, Nuffield, FSA England, FSA Northern Ireland, TUC, NESTA and the Big Lottery Fund.

Recent projects led and conducted by Deborah include: an evaluation of a Nutrition Award Scheme pilot for food businesses (for the Food Standards Agency in Northern Ireland), an evaluation of the impact on livelihood development of International Development grants on overseas communities (for the Big Lottery Fund); trends, causes and correlates of continuing to work beyond state pension age (for Eurofound) and a literature review of the costs and benefits to businesses of adopting work-life balance and flexible working policies and practices (for BIS).

Derek Smith
Visiting Fellow

Derek has been a Visiting Research Fellow at PSI since October 2003. His principal areas of research are on the business impact of environmental policy, and on sustainable consumption and production, including the issue of product-related policy. He is currently the Director of a consultancy specialising in public policy analysis and evaluation. Prior to this, he worked for 13 years at Ernst & Young, in the Sustainable Development group and on risk management and assurance.

Derek's recent research has included:

• a systematic review of the drivers, barriers and incentives for resource productivity, undertaken for the UK DTI;
• a review of the extent and adequacy of UK government spending on environmental protection in the context of the 2004 public spending round;
• an analysis of UK energy efficiency policies and programmes as part of an independent evaluation carried out for DEFRA, focusing on public sector programmes and targets;
• a review of the market impacts and competitiveness impacts of sustainable procurement policies and targets;
• reviews for the European Commission and the UK government on the development of product-oriented environmental policy, including consideration of the role of instruments to create markets and drive green product innovation;
• a review for the European Commission into the adoption by industry of life-cycle approaches and its implications for competitiveness and trade.

Fred Steward
Professor of Innovation and Sustainability
f.steward@psi.org.uk

Fred joined PSI in October 2009. Prior to this, he led innovation research at the business schools of Brunel University and Aston University. Seconded to NESTA in 2008, he has advised government departments in the UK, Europe and China on innovation and sustainability. During 2009, he was seconded to Advantage West Midlands to develop a bid to the European Institute of Innovation & Technology for a climate change Knowledge & Innovation Community. He is Visiting Professor at Imperial College, London and President of the European Association for the Study of Science & Technology, EASST.

His primary research interest is in ‘transformative innovation’ - pervasive, radical, system-wide social and technological change. His approach to this is a synthesis between innovation network concepts and sociotechnical transition theory. The focus of his research is the role of innovation in addressing the global challenge of climate change and environmental sustainability, and the implications of this for policy.

Fred is a member of several international committees: the Dutch Knowledge & System Innovation programme, the Sustainable Consumption Research network and the IHDP Industrial Transformation programme. He is a member of the Royal Society committee on Global Environmental Change.

Vivienne Stiemens
Librarian
v.stiemens@psi.org.uk

Much of Vivienne’s experience has been in academic and research libraries, and in the area of research support. Early in her career she specialised in AACR/MARC cataloguing, and worked for a time as a consultant in this field.

BA, DipLib, MSc (Econ)
Chartered member of CILIP, and Qualified Indexer (Society of Indexers).

Stephen Tindale
Visiting Research Fellow

Stephen was previously Executive Director of Greenpeace UK and Chair of Greenpeace Europe in Brussels. Before that he was Special Adviser to Michael Meacher when he was Environment Minister. Prior to that, he was Head of Environment at IPPR. He has published short books (through IPPR) on Green Tax Reform and energy policy.

Robin Vanner
Visiting Research Fellow
robin_vanner@yahoo.co.uk

Robin has nine years of experience as a researcher and consultant in the field of environmental economics and policy. He has been a PSI Fellow since 2003 and a Visiting Research Fellow since 2006. He has developed a broad range of economic assessment expertise, developed during projects requiring compliance cost assessments, impact assessments and assessment of administrative costs. This area of work led Robin to co-authoring a book on the subject in 2009, Understanding the Cost of Regulation in Europe. Most recently he has been working on consumer-based policy for the EU looking at behaviour and pro-environmental product policy for a number of energy-using product areas including electronic appliances, electrical white goods and vehicles.

Sandra Vegeris
Senior Research Fellow
s.vegeris@psi.org.uk

Sandra joined PSI in 2001 and was promoted to senior researcher in 2005. Her expertise draws from 15 years research experience in social policy and programme evaluation, with an emphasis on multi-methods approaches. She has project managed both large scale national level and smaller scale local level research projects which have included evidence reviews, survey research, case studies, and depth interviews with either cross-sectional or longitudinal designs. Her research interests encompass: labour market interventions, poverty and disadvantaged groups, policy on older people, measures that promote quality of life in later life, and citizen participation in governance.

Kim Vowden
Research Fellow
k.vowden@psi.org.uk

Kim joined PSI in June 2009 from the Institute of Education, where he recently completed a PhD on middle-class parents and social mix in London primary schools. Before retraining as a social researcher, he was a solicitor specialising in immigration and nationality law. He has also taught English as a foreign language and is a qualified primary-school teacher. At PSI, Kim specialises in qualitative research and is particularly interested in the areas of employment, education and migration.

Ben Watson
Research Officer
watsonb@psi.org.uk

Ben joined PSI in July 2009, and is currently working on the Green Fiscal Commission and the Sustainable Development Research Network (SDRN). Ben is also working on the Maiden Lane project, which will use action-based research to assess and improve how community recycling projects are implemented and used to encourage pro-environmental behaviour. Prior to joining PSI, he worked at FairPensions - the Campaign for Responsible Investment - and has been involved in many other environmental and human rights campaigns. In June 2008 he was given the 'London Social Justice Campaigner 2008' award by the Sheila McKechnie Foundation; a UK charitable foundation that aims to promote effective campaigning. Ben holds a first-class BA in Historical Studies from the University of Bristol.

Michael White
Emeritus Fellow
m.white@psi.org.uk

Michael White joined PSI in 1979 after working in industry and management research and teaching. In 1986 he founded the Employment Studies Group and was its Head until 1994.

His studies have included three national surveys of unemployment, and many evaluations of government labour market programmes, including the Restart Cohort Study, and the Macro evaluation of New Deal for Young People. He took part in the ESRC's Social Change and Economic Life Initiative (1986-91), was co-director of the Employment in Britain survey (1992), and was involved in the ESRC's "Future of Work" programme, leading the Working in Britain in the Year 2000 survey. He has also carried out several projects on lone mothers, employment and childcare issues and has a particular interest in working time and work-life balance.

He served on the Social Statistics Committee of the Royal Statistical Society 1998-2002, and on the Editorial Board of Work, Employment and Society 2006-2008.

In 2005 he was awarded an OBE for services to labour market policy.

Ralf Wilke
Visiting Research Fellow
ralf.wilke@york.ac.uk

Ralf Wilke is Reader in Microeconometrics at the University of York. His research interests are in the areas of Microeconometrics and Applied Econometrics. He has published in leading international journals such as Journal of the European Economic Association, Journal of Business and Economic Statistics, Journal of Applied Econometrics and Regional Studies. Moreover, he has publications in the leading German journals. He has successfully completed externally funded research projects and is currently the principal investigator of an ESRC first grant. He is a research fellow of the ZEW Mannheim.

David Wilkinson
Visiting Research Fellow
d.wilkinson@niesr.ac.uk

David is a Senior Research Fellow at the National Institute of Economic and Social Research. He was previously Principal Research Fellow at the Policy Studies Institute and before that worked at the Office for National Statistics and the London School of Economics. His work has focused on a range of topics in applied labour economics. His recent research has covered evaluation methodology with applications to welfare-to-work programmes; the impact of recent changes in student funding. Current research includes scoping work towards estimation of the take-up of Disability Living Allowance and Attendance Allowance, and a quality measurement framework for pre-school education.